The Psychic Legacy

Chapter 2: Exorcism

I struggled against the restraints but the wood that had just woven around my limbs had solidified again. I was pinned in place. I shot a frightened glance at Polly and, to my horror, her eyes were dark and sad. She looked resigned.

No.

"I'm sorry, Rach," Polly said, her eyes glistening for a moment before she blinked it away. "I didn't want..." She stopped herself and shook her head. "It's for the best."

"Shouldn't we at least talk about this?" I shouted. I thrashed against the chair, but it was no use. This was all happening too fast.

"What's to talk about?" Matilda sighed. She circled me in the chair, inspecting me, probably to make sure I wasn't going anywhere. I felt every gaze of her eyes as it trailed over every inch of myself. "You need an exorcism. There's a spirit in there."

Exorcism? The word sent a chill through me.

"But how do you know for sure? And how is that possible?" I shot back. "How could anything get in? I was in Luc's—" I struggled for a moment to think of the right word, "—cage. And—And I was wearing the key!" Unable to move my arms, I could only nod down at the golden chain and key that dangled from my neck.

Matilda laughed and then reached out and dragged her gnarled finger down the exposed skin of my scarred arm. Her touch was as light as a feather, but it felt like a red hot iron was being rolled down my flesh wherever she made contact. I hissed a breath between my clenched teeth.

"Stop!" I cried.

Mercifully, she did.

"As I said before, there's no sense in locking the door when there's a hole in the wall," Matilda said. She flicked at the key around my neck before pulling it off of me and wandering beyond the confines of circle. "This won't keep them out, now."

"Keep what out? Of where?"

"Who can say what thing might venture through?" Matilda muttered to herself, back to her riddles. She dropped the key into her pocket. "Nothing good, that's for sure."

"Can you not?" Polly snapped. "You're freaking her out!"

The old woman didn't seem to hear her.

Polly glared at the back of Matilda's snow-white head as it bobbed around the edge of the room, before she turned back to me. "She means that your scar is acting like a door," Polly said, her brow creasing together. "She explained it all on the long drive back. Or at least she tried to..."

"My scar?" I echoed. I looked down at the angry red burn that wove up my arm, or at least what I could see beneath the twisted wood. I could only see a little of the angry rivers of red welted scar.

A vivid memory played in my head... The heat as I shoved my arm into the flaming mouth of the Beast, tossing salt directly into its gut... The smell of burning hair and flesh... The pain...

And then afterwards what Luc had said, all those months ago, after I had woken up in the hospital.

"Magic that dark affects people in strange ways," he had said, when I had asked why my arm hadn't been healed away like the rest of my wounds. "People and places that have come in contact with that sort of stuff are forever changed."

And he was right. The scar was strange from the beginning. First the phantom pains, then the dreams, and finally the visions of strange ghostly girls. But I hadn't considered that it might all be connected, that the scar itself was the reason for all of it. 

Had Luc? 

Is that why he had been so secretive and overprotective?

Why hadn't he told me?